THE good rains have been with us since last year.
In my village heyday I would have welcomed this; no back-breaking weeding, no fertiliser application, just extended rest!
My late grandmother, aCecilia, would have been waking up everyday anticipating the crow’s cry, gunguwo rachema, to signal the end of mubvumbi.
Of course, with her knack for punishing schedules, she could also be commanding us to plant sweet potatoes in the drenching rain.
But, as my friend Nzou remarked the other day: “Irikungoti ikashaya zvekuita, yonaya,” it is perhaps time to have a good laugh about this abundance.
We cannot pray against it.
After all, rain-induced famine is better than drought famine.
On New Year’s Day, I was in the village.
Muchembere wasted no time harassing me for fertiliser, fearing soon, the rains would be gone.
She does not care about late salaries, bonus uncertainties, Christmas overspending, back to school woes and all that fall under the moniker, ‘January disease’.
Harassed, I had to scrounge for money to buy the fertiliser which I finally delivered last week.
Never mind it cost me a fortune; US$37/50kg up from US$32 before Christmas, or that it could be a couple more weeks before she gets a rain-break opportunity to apply the fertiliser.
When I got to the village, I found it almost deserted.
Many had gone to a funeral of a prominent war collaborator in the neighbouring village.
I soon tracked muchembere to the funeral gathering.
VaGono, a leader from local political structures, was giving a vote of thanks.
He reserved special thanks for a Kapoto who had ‘carried the funeral expenses in his deep pockets’.
As an afterthought, VaGono then also acknowledged contributions from Zimbudzana.
The facial reactions among some of the mourners told an untold story.
My good guess was that it was about VaGono.
VaGono, I have known since my primary school days at Unyetu.
He was tall, strong and walked with long confident strides then.
Now well into his 70s, he has not lost much of his 1970s self.
A newcomer could not imagine that this man’s political career was only resurrected well after independence.
He had been shamed into political oblivion by an incident that occurred in 1972.
I was in Grade One at Unyetu, together with his son Pedzi, a tall gangly fellow then.
The details escape me now, but it had something to do with birth certificates and national identity cards.
VaGono was chairperson of the Unyetu School Parents Association.
Parents had pooled monies for birth certificates and identity cards that had to be acquired from the Range District offices.
The morning of VaGono’s return from the Range, there was an uproar in the village with allegations of funds misappropriation being loudly made.
My mother refused to accept ‘chitikinyani’ VaGono had brought for my cousin, Gideon.
She insisted on a proper ID, ‘chitupa’.
The dispute escalated to the school and VaGono made a confession and was promptly voted out of the parents association.
Pedzi had a terrible time being mocked by classmates for his father’s sins.
Not long before this incident, Pedzi had been a hero as his father and the headmaster had presided over public punishing of three Hodo brothers in Grades Three, Five and Seven.
They had been caught stealing green maize cobs from the school garden.
On being interrogated, it was established they had set up a boarding camp in a kopje near the school garden and had been living off school produce for over a week.
To their credit, the brothers, who came from a village 10 kilometres away, had never missed school – even during the garden kopje boarding week!
They were paraded, in improvised hand and leg cuffs, and made to sit in a bookshelf, at the school assembly point, pamutsetse.
VaGono, in menacing mood, made the poor souls repeat their confession to all of us loudly.
They looked on the wilder side from reddish soiling and facial bruises and swellings attesting perhaps to the earlier roughing up they had received from VaGono.
Sadly for VaGono, a Jamaica song saying of the same year, ‘the harder they come, the harder they fall’, had come to haunt him.
Throughout the war years VaGono lived with his shame.
He shied from being part of the local leadership.
Pedzi never recovered from the shaming of his father and eventually joined the lot of early school dropouts, ‘home-defenders’.
End of 1979, the war came to an end, but still VaGono never entered political leadership contests.
On the way back home, I asked muchembere what the furore was all about; Kapoto, Zimbudzana and deep pockets.
She explained that Kapoto and Zimbudzana were competing to represent the party in next year’s parliamentary elections.
VaGono was doing Kapoto’s bidding.
She felt Zimbudzana should just throw in the towel for he could not match Kapoto’s deep pockets.
On whether the sitting MP would not be contesting, she said in the last two years, the MP had slowed down markedly in food assistance.
He was no longer a reliable ‘donor redu’, a tag he had acquired in the run-up to the 2013 parliamentary elections.
I tried to reason without success that an MP should be assessed on developments he influences with regards health, education, electricity, water, roads and bridges, but Muchembere would have none of it.
VaGono has regained his clout.
He walks without shame anymore in the village, much as he did prior to the ‘zvitikinyani’ scandal in 1972.
Anyone seeking higher political office will have to transact with him first.
So far, the donor-dependent village has not complained.
Here they don’t eat development.
They are brutally honest.